Making Bread Together

Video Summary: Kindergarten teacher Meylin Gonzalez brings economic concepts to life in the classroom by creating a hands-on assembly line in which her students make bread. Ms. Gonzalez begins by reading a book entitled Pasta, Please to help students understand how pasta is made and where commercially prepared food comes from. Then they discuss the production and marketing processes involved in making and selling bread. Students invent a fictitious company called Kinderbread, make advertisements for their bread, and discuss how people make decisions about what they buy.

Working in groups, students form assembly lines and begin the process of making bread by hand. Each student has a job to do, such as adding an ingredient or kneading the dough. The assembly line structure not only illustrates the different steps involved in making bread, but also underscores the importance of each step in the production process. Meanwhile, Ms. Gonzalez starts a batch of dough in a bread-making machine. While the dough rises, Ms. Gonzalez explains concepts like supply and demand by first defining needs and wants and asking students to distinguish between them with examples from their own lives. The lesson concludes with a snack of fresh-baked bread, during which students compare the efficiency of making bread by hand versus using a machine.